http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2022/01/143-chaikin-power-tool-widget.html

#142 Blog Post – Wednesday, January 12, 2022

Postedby Denny Hatch

An Amazing Infomercial, a Wizard and His
Gizmo That Can Make You Obscenely Rich

Prediction2021 Event: Marc Chaikin’s
PowerGauge Investment Opportunity

Just over adecade ago, the guy on the right — shaking hands with CNBC’s legendary JimCramer — bought the gargantuan double-house next door to us on sleepy, narrowGaskill Street in center city Philly. His name is Marc Chaikin. He is alegendary investment guru and inventor of the Power Gauge—the mostastonishing stock market analysis gizmo in the history of finance.

No kidding.

Iran into Marc at the annual holiday Gaskill Street block party the summer 2021 andhe told me that he and his gizmo were now in the hands of Bill Bonner’s AgoraPublishing, a billion-dollar-a-year direct marketing, privately-heldconglomerate in Baltimore. He was finally, at last! poised to make agazillion dollars after ten years in the wilderness.

WhatTriggered this Blog Post:
ATextbook Brilliant Infomercial!

Marc and Sandy sold their big house and moved to New England. Below is the7-word email from Gail—our incredibly savvy, eagle-eyed former neighbor acrossthe street—about our former neighbors, Marc and Sandy Chaikin, who lived nextdoor. Gail’s 7-word email:

“MarcChaikin is alive and promoting himself.”

Gailincluded a link to Marc’s extraordinary infomercial selling his Gizmo. 

You will have the link to Marc's textbook brilliant infomercial at the end of this post.  (Note: I found myself hanging on every word.)

The Nightmare Revisited

Onehot, hot Fourth of July many years ago at our Gaskill Street block party Ifound myself sitting next to the new neighbor, Marc Chaikin. We got talkingabout investing and — you guessed it — direct marketing. He started describinghis invention — a gizmo/widget that could be installed on an iPhone orcomputer. It contained detailed data on the stock market. Updated continuously,it synthesized dozens of metrics for 5,000 stocks and could tell you in aninstant whether to BUY, HOLD or SELL with unerring accuracy: 

That dayMarc set me up with his Power Gauge widget on my Apple computer. Istarted playing with it. Peggy and I have turned over our modest portfolio toFidelity and are happy. But I was dazzled by this extraordinary invention.

Marc was inthe process of putting together a small company to market his Power Gauge toinvestors. On that Independence Day picnic I said: “Marc, I can make you veryrich.”

After a fewmore conversations about direct marketing, Marc hired me as aconsultant/copywriter for $1,000 a month. As I recall he gave me a wee piece of the action if the thing flew.

AKooky Business Model

My memory isa bit fuzzy here, but as I recall Marc had assembled a small gaggle of optionsbrokers, traders and advisors. They had convinced him that he had come up witha neat-o lead-generation gimmick for traders to land customers and make bigbucks on commissions. The deal: give away the Power Gauge free to optionsinvestors. When an investor placed a trade through the optionsXpress platformMarc’s little company would get a nice commission. As I recall, it was a one-timecommission; not a commission on every trade.

The Obvious Business Model

Notone to mince words, I told Marc I had never heard of a deal like this.

Iimmediately saw the Power Gauge as a potential gold mine and thefoundation of a fantastic investor’s advisory service. Alas options traders arethe wrong people. This gizmo is for serious, long-term stock market investors.Options guys are get-rich-quick day traders. They are not investors; they arecrap shooters—gamblers. They love hot action, day trading and the rush of quickprofits.

I rememberedthe immortal words of professional gambler Nick Dandolos—a.k.a. Nick the Greek.He died Christmas Day, 1966). The Greek reportedly proclaimed: “The greatestthrill is winning. The second greatest thrill is losing.”

My Pitch to Marc

“Don’t give thisgem away free!” I urged. Yeah, give it away as a free trial for a week or two.During the trial period, blitz the responders with emails about what the gizmois saying and how much money investors were making from it. Then convert themto becoming paid subscribers to the Power Gauge. Once in the fold, gofor the jugular. Upsell the users to a pricy email newsletter that tipped themoff to the hottest stocks to buy and the money-losing bummers to short.

Anybody out there remember Rod Smart of
The short-lived (2001) XFL Football League
Whose nickname was, "HE HATE ME"? 

The optionsguys that Marc had assembled hated me. I hated them. Yeah, I wrote the copythat Marc and his guys ordered me to write, but I was miserable. The businessmodel was going nowhere and I knew it. My arrangement with Marc lasted a coupleof months. Then one day a member of Marc’s team called me up and startedscreaming at me over the phone. Peggy and I talked and we decided that sinceMarc and Sandy lived next door it was not a good idea to get into a fight withneighbors. What’s more, I was spending too damn much time on Marc’s project forthe grand a month he was paying me.

I firedMarc.

LookingBack in Hindsight…

At the time,I was a freelancer with a 50-year career in direct marketing. When I signed onwith Marc and he explained the cockamamie business model, I smelled a rat. Asfounder of WHO’S MAILING WHAT! and, later, editor and publisher (withPeggy) of Target Marketing magazine, I traveled the country attendingand exhibiting at myriad expos, conferences and local gatherings selling adsand interviewing top direct marketers for cover stories. I knew the business.Above all, I knew cold the arithmetic of continuity series and subscriptionservices many of whom had been early employers of mine as well as  clients.

Itseemed to me these guys Marc had assembled had figured out how to co-opt the PowerGauge—a work of authentic genius—to be used as a common lead generator.

To Marc’smini-consortium I was the arch-enemy—a pain-in-the-ass little jerkwatercopywriter in the sad-sack shack next door who knew nothing about the innerworkings of Wall Street and was trying to upset their gravy train to juicycommissions from options traders.

Overthe Next 10 Years…

We neverbecame close friends of Marc and Sandy. Periodically we would bump into eachother on the street or at summer block parties and I would ask him how he wasdoing with the gizmo. He would regale me with the names of all the importantpeople who loved it and all the great connections he was making. But I gatheredthe business did not take off.

Then in the summerof ‘21 he told me he was in business with Bill Bonner’s billion-dollar AgoraMarketing, publisher of 300 books and 120 newsletters with 205,524 activesubscribers. It was a yummy (and long overdue) association.

Bill Bonner in front of his French Chateau d'Ouzilly—
down the road from David Ogilvy's Chateau dte Touffou.
"I never understood why copywriters feel the need to own
French chateaux," Bonner once said to me.

I knew BillBonner fairly well. I wrote a cover story on him for Target Marketing. His sister-in-lawwas a dear friend of my parents in upstate New York. 

Iburroweddeep into my files and came up with a fascinating exchange of memos where I tried to introduce Bill Bonner to the fledgling direct marketers, Marc and SandyChaikin.

Ten yearslater, it turns out I was right.

Sigh…

== = = = = = = = = = = = = =

To:        William Bonner

From:     Denny Hatch

Date:     March 10,2011

Subject: Breakthrough New Stock RatingSystem and iPhone App—Free to Your Subscribers

Dear Bill,

Had acatch-up lunch with Beth Ketzner and Kathleen Peddicord last month here inPhilly. All very upbeat and great fun.

I don’t thinkyou and I have spoken since you were the 1997 Target Marketing magazineDirect Marketer of the Year and I came to Baltimore to interview you for the coverstory.

I amcurrently working with Marc Chaikin, who is well-known in the financial worldand regular columnist for SeekingAlpha.com.

I thinkyou’ll find his new Chaikin Power Gauge Reports and iPhone App to bebreakthrough achievements as stock research tools.

You can readthis e-mail or cut to the chase and go directly to [Marc Chaikin's link].

Whatmakes the Chaikin Power Gauge unique:

• It distills masses of complex data on each stock into clear and conciseactionable color displays.

•  Green is bullish-positive – BUY NOW.

•  Red is bearish-negative — SELL (or maybe Sell Short)

•  Yellow is neutral — HOLD.

• Withthe Power Gauge it’s possible to make a buy-sell-hold decision literally inseconds.

Notonly are the red-green-yellow displays based on impartial, third-party researchinto more than 5,000 stocks—all updated daily—but also the system has been independentlyback-tested over a 10-year period with complete success.

Investorsthat want detailed analysis beyond the green-red-yellow indicators can enter ane-mail address and the ticker symbol of any stock and click on “SEND MYREPORT.”

By returne-mail comes the 4-page pdf Chaikin Power Gauge Report.

With the newiPhone App (released yesterday), all this research is not only available, butalso iPhone users can trade 24/7 anywhere on the planet. In Marc Chaikin’swords, “It’s like having broker in your pocket.”

[I included the iPhone App link.]

The entiresystem is currently free.

No cost. Norisk. No obligation.

Once you’vetried it, you might like to pass it on to your readers.

Here’sa fascinating test:

1.Take a moment to visit

[Marc Chaikin's Blog]

2. Pick astock symbol and get a Free pdf 4-page Power Gauge Report by return e-mail.

3. Thenenter the same ticker symbol into Google Finance, MSN Money and/or YahooFinance.

See foryourself which one solves the information overload problem by providing quickand easy decision-making tools.

I think youwill agree the Chaikin Power Gauge Report wins hands down!

If you wouldlike to offer it to your readership, Marc Chaikin is available at:

Thank you,Bill.

I hope allis well.

Denny Hatch

== = = = = = = = = = = = = =

From: WilliamRBonner@xxx.com

Subject: Re:Breakthrough New York Stock Rating System and iPhone App—Free to your subscribers.

To: dennyhatch@yahoo.com

Date:Friday, March 25, 2011, 2:08 PM

Denny,

Yes, it's beena while.  Beth tells me you've been busy.

Chaikin'sproduct is interesting...how does he make any money?

Bill

== = = = = = = = = = = = = =

To:        William Bonner

From:     Denny Hatch

Date:     March 27,2011

 DearBill,

Thank youfor getting back to me about the new Chaikin Power Tools Research Reportssystem and iPhone App.

This is inresponse to your 6-word question: “How does he make any money?”

Two years indevelopment and several months in beta testing, this is in the early stages ofthe product launch.

By way of backgroundMarc Chaikin’s team includes Wharton grad students, the past Head of Marketingfor Reuters America, a Gartner analyst and a veritable cadre of smart staffersfrom twenty-somethings to septuagenarians.

These guysare working at the intersection of two well documented trends: (1) onlinefinancial services are migrating to primarily mobile access at unprecedentedrates and (2) massive flows of assets are moving out of traditional brokerageaccounts and into self-directed accounts.

Afterinvestigating everything from paid apps to "freemiums" toadvertising-supported, they've settled on a blended business model tocommercialize their service. 

At thistime, the iPhone app is free to download. This is based on analyses of howrapidly initial interest and downloads drop off for paid apps. 

Consistentwith other mobile services, they've negotiated with their brokerage partner,optionsXpress, to receive revenue for their users who open new accounts.

OptionsXpressis the primary revenue stream that they are pursuing. They expect to prove thatnot only do their clients open new accounts but also trade frequently, and sorepeat this model with other online brokers in the near future allowing avariety of online brokerage clients to transact right in the app.

Incidentally,it was reported this week that Charles Schwab will be acquiring optionsXpress:

CharlesSchwab's $1 billion offer last week for midsize optionsXpress seems like a goodmove for the online-brokerage giant. The all-stock deal should allow Schwab toupdate the options tools on its Website and to integrate futures trading, helpingit stay relevant in a very competitive technology race. The firm is choosing tobuy the technology rather than build it, and also gets the chance to absorboptionsXpress' nearly 400,000 accounts.

—Theresa W.Carey
   Barron’s,Saturday, March 26, 2011

This shouldbe a very positive development in the dynamics of the launch and the future ofChaikin Power Tools.

Right now,the focus is building traction and creating evangelists with their brokeragepartner revenue model. 

In additionto the above they are also pursuing development and testing of other revenuestreams:

• Buildingadvertising support into their apps.

• Monthlysubscription for an "ad free" version.

• A paidreal time product for the active trader community with real time data and tradinganalytics.

• Turn theresearch reports—now entirely free—into a subscription product.

• A plan tooffer their application and a module to be integrated with a traditionalbroker's desktop workflow to full-service brokers in a traditional enterprisesoftware-licensing model.

Meanwhile,Marc Chaikin is stoking the fires with his weekly column in SeekingAlpha.com and will be making therounds of the cable financial shows. The schedule so far:

March 31— Fox Business,Varney & Co. with Stuart Varney

April 12— CNBC Worldwide Exchange“CNBC networks' most distributed show, simultaneously available in more than100 countries across the globe.”)

This week,the Chaikin Power Tools iPhone App was featured as the leading financial app inthe iTunes Store.

Initial userreviews are real good. Below is a sampling:

“AFREE IPHONE APPcalled Chaikin Power Tools was just launched. It provides trading signals onapproximately 5,000 stocks. The app lets you set up your own watch list orselect from a built-in industry list. If you pick, for example, conglomerates,you'll see recent prices (20 minutes delayed) for the companies in the group,plus a proprietary Power Gauge, which gives you a bullish (green), bearishred) or neutral (yellow) signal. Clicking on a gauge provides additionaldetail, plus the ability to view a graph and see some basic information aboutthe company. It's free, and it's fun. Check it out.”

—Theresa W.Carey
   Barron’s,Saturday, March 26, 2011

ChaikinPower Tools (iPhone, iPad) FREE

“Stockmarket savvy app owners will have a good time with Chaikin Power Tools, an appfilled with analytical tools to monitor the market and making smart moves. Theapp was designed by market expert Marc Chaikin and it works through more than 20different factors of information to help make buying and selling decisions.

    “The app also keeps track of outside information that can help you makedecisions about stocks. You can monitor breaking news that might affect themarket, and even keep up on high activity on Twitter regarding a certain stock.And you can make your trades right from the app using optionsXpress.”

 — GetLatestNewsUpdates.Blogspot.com
     March25, 2011

Bill, etchedin my brain is an exchange we had over lunch in 1997 about the (then nascent)Internet that nobody really understood except perhaps Jeff Bezos and yourself.I muttered something about the business models that were built on “attractingeyeballs” as being nuts.

“The onlybank that takes eyeballs,” you shot back, “is the eye bank.”

Marc Chaikinain’t in the eyeballs business!

Finally,a scenario:

A couple offinancial guys are having lunch at the Bar Vendôme and one guy mentions a hotstock. After lunch the other guy goes on his iPhone to the Power Gaugeon the Chaikin App. The colors are green—bullish-buy. Just to be sure herequests the 4-page Power Gauge Report on the stock and it arrives as apdf by return e-mail. Everything looks good and he trades in his account, whichis confirmed shortly after the market opens.

Conversely,if his luncheon partner identified some bad news about a stock that was in theguy’s portfolio, he could sell on the spot and be out before it started to reallytank.

In short,with the Chaikin Power Tools App, an investor has instant hands-on control ofhis portfolio 24/7 anywhere in the world. Isn’t this 21st century personalfinancial management at its most elegant? 

Incidentally,Marc would be happy to jump on a train to give you more details in person onhis Chaikin Power Tools—or, if you are so inclined, we’d love to see you inPhilly for lunch at the Union League. He is:

Thank youagain for following up. Hope this is helpful.

Denny Hatch

== = = = = = = = = = = = = = 

Zero reply from Bill. He blew me off.

Now, 10 years later, Bonner and Chaikin have themselves a joint venture and a riveting one-hour-plus infomercial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1F0p3ASDeE

Takeawaysto Consider

•Maybe if I’d hung in there and got Chaikin and Bonner seriously talking to eachother I mighta wound up richer than Croesus.

• I loveBonner. But hated the guys Chaikin had assembled.

• Life’s toodamn short to spend in perpetual misery, fear, angst and anger hoping for a bigpayout in an uncertain future.

• Here’sMarc's Current Offer from Agora Marketing.

The Link to MarcChaikin’s Powerful
Power Gauge Infomercial Currently Running

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1F0p3ASDeE

YouTube Key Words
“Chaikin Analytics”

###

WordCount: 3002